


It Ain't Me Babe (Nah), It Ain't Me You're Looking For (Babe)

by tourdefierce



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Manpain, So Married, innerlesbianrage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:46:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tourdefierce/pseuds/tourdefierce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story in which Danny makes lists and can't find his heterosexuality underneath all his homogay, Steve has a lot of faces, Kono is perfect in every way and Chin continues to keep Hawaii safe from the Five-O's general disfunction—Or, a story about Kono being awesome and how she likes her men with hearts in their eyes for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Ain't Me Babe (Nah), It Ain't Me You're Looking For (Babe)

**Author's Note:**

> But leashy_bebes has been nothing but an enabler, as she beta'd this fic, and made it everything it is now. Thanks to hermette and slowdead for their encouragement. All remaining mistakes are my own damn fault. Title from the Bob Dylan version of the song. This is my first fic in this fandom, but so far it looks like it's a lot like my other fandoms: porn and feelings. I HOPE I'M NOT A DISAPPOINTMENT.

<3<3<3

After every case, Danny makes a list.

Lists are safe. Lists are simple, straightforward and lists, here's the deal, lists never get anyone shot at. Lists will never be charged with reckless endangerment of their partners. Lists, he's sure, make sure their partners are safely tucked in after a long day at work, with a promise to memorize the Miranda rights for the next arrest before turning on a night-light on their way out.

Before he met SEAL boy, he had a very short list entitled: _Things That Almost Got Me Killed_. It was a list that Danny rarely took out. Why? Because New Jersey is a pretty safe place. Sure, there are gangsters and traffic jams and just, generally unpleasant things that come with being a cop in Jersey but for the most part, truly life-threatening situations were on low down. When he moved to Hawaii, the bastard state, there were only four items on the list: Coney Island, Forgetting to Duck, Joey "Jo" Fillipelli and Marriage to Rachel.

He was looking forward to adding a few things in his lifetime. For example, he was waiting to add _Gracie's first boyfriend_ and _Gracie's first year in college_ \--that is to say, there are some things that Danny is sure will be painful and heart-attack inducing but completely worth it. There are risks when one has a child that is both very beautiful and very smart. He understands that.

What he doesn't understand, is why he now misses that list. Oh, he misses that list like he misses his mother's lasagna. He longs for that list like he longs for a new bed—a bed that is a bed, all the time. He yearns for that list like he yearns for a loaded hotdog from Mike's on a summer night. Okay? He fucking pines for this list.

You ask why? That's okay. You're totally entitled to ask why. The why is not complicated. The reason? It's a lot like the lists, simple and easy.

The why is Steve McGarrett, government psycho with a pretend police badge and no concept of parking laws, let alone police procedure or things such as due process. Because of this mutant dolphin, Danny doesn't have a _Things That Almost Got Me Killed_ list anymore. If he did, it'd be as long as the islands he now lives on. Instead, he's had to make new categories—he's had to reorganize his lists because McGarrett is a crazy man. He's a loon.

Danny used to like lists. They used to comfort him.

But now? Now it's just another area of his life that McGarrett has taken over with brute force, like the way pineapple forces its way through all the other flavors when it's put on pizza until all you can taste is pineapple and not a single taste bud remembers what it's like to taste good pie.

Lt. Commander Steve McGarrett is a hijacker of lists.

(Among other things.)

<3<3<3

Mondays aren't Danny's favorite day.

It's not that it's the end of the weekend, because Danny can't remember the last time he had a solid Saturday and Sunday that didn't involve criminals or life-threatening situations. Whatever. It's his job and he's damn good at it. Now that he's with the Five-0, he has learned to loathe Mondays with a new passion.

Every Monday is Surf-Monday. What does that mean? Well, it means that even though everyone on this demented, tourist trap of an island spends their spare time either breaking the law or swimming in the freaking ocean, Monday is when the craziest locals get up at ass-o'clock in the morning and surf.

Now, Danny knows what you're saying to yourself. _But Danny! You're not a local, you don't surf—what could you possibly have to bitch about?_

You? You have no idea. You're probably real smart and have never left the glorious state of New Jersey in your lifetime and therefore, have never spent a Monday morning at the Five-0 headquarters. You're lucky. You're probably a very sane person. You're probably still holding on your heterosexuality.

Danny is not.

"That was wicked island, brah," Kono says, actually fistbumping _the fucking Governor_ and shaking her head, water droplets flying from her hair like a wet dog.

Danny needs more coffee.

They're both very beautiful women. Danny knows this, hell, Danny _sees_ this with his very eyes. The Governor is wearing surf-trunks and a bikini top, her skin pink from the sun. Kono, she never wears enough clothes. It's an island. _He knows_. But that doesn't stop him from staring at Kono in her tiny two-piece swimsuit that he will never let Gracie see because she loves Kono, looks up to her, and as soon as Gracie sees that stupid, inappropriate swimwear, she will want one and Danny would rather eat sand than see his baby girl in a swimsuit like that.

But ya know, on Kono, it's not bad.

Danny is not complaining about the lack of appropriate work attire from the ladies, although he will say that he's the only one in his damn office who even _owns_ a tie and there is something wrong with that. He's not even complaining about Chin Ho, good old Chin, who is currently tracking sand into HQ like he doesn't complain about the tiny little granules when they get into the future-machine they call the tech-table. Chin is not wearing a shirt either, his flip flops are making a very annoying sound on the ground and he's dripping salty water all over the hallway while he talks animatedly with the ladies.

No, see, none of this is what makes Danny's hands shake with something that might be lust but is probably more like fury.

The source of all of these _stupid_ feelings is bringing up the rear.

Lt. Commander McSpeedo is glowing, literally, from Vitamin B. He's tall, dark and smiling like a goof—like he's just spent the last three hours "catchin' waves, brah" and "hangin' loose" or whatever the hell these yahoos call it. He's relaxed, like the nights he's gotten laid, and the worst part of it is, Danny can see it. He can see it very clearly because Steve is wearing a speedo that _clings_ as if to announce to the whole entire island that yes, Navy boys do look very good in blue and yes, all those other rumors, such as Steve's impressive tackle, are true as well. Steve's not wearing anything else. Just a speedo and a smile.

Danny pulls out his list. It's one of many now dedicated to Steve.

 _Things About McJackass That I Do Not Like_.

He underlines _speedo_ and _annoyingly attractive obliques_ twice and ignores the rest of the list, which contains but is not unlimited to the following: _tattoos, nipples, trigger-happy finger, dick sucking lips, ninja skills, shiny pectorals, driving habits, clingy cargo pants,_ and last, but certainly not the least annoying, _Steven's stupid emotive face_.

If there's another list (Things That Give Me An Inappropriate Erection), there might be some overlap between them.

Danny underlines _speedo_ again just as Steve catches him staring and gives him two thumbs up.

"I hate you," Danny says, smiling through his teeth as the rest of the team high-fives and splits off in different directions. Steve stands, satisfied smile still stretched across his face, and Danny just wants to—he just, he just wants to...

He just _wants_.

When Steve finally blinks, his face going from SEAL-blank to sheepish boy within a few seconds, Danny wills himself not to watch when Steve walks toward his own office. He wills himself to stop looking at Steve's swim toned, Rambo-trained ass but he can't look away.

It's like some sort of Hawaiian hypnosis.

"Pull yourself together, Danno," he says to himself, forcing his eyes back to the colossal mountain of paperwork on his desk.

<3<3<3

It's not like Danny is completely unaware of his homo-tendencies. He was in college! He was man enough to admit it to Rachel when they first got together—full disclosure and all that. He has, occasionally, had a dick in his mouth. Sure, he married Rachel but she's... _Rachel_ and let's all be honest with each other right now, who fucked who in that marriage? Who got reamed in the ass in the end? Right? Thank you so very much.

Danny still likes women and he's even picked up a few since coming to this sand-infested, skin-cancer ridden, hell-hole of an island. He's had dates. He's had flings. He's had romantic partners.

But it's just not working for him.

He gets off. They get off. There is coffee in the morning and digits exchanged. There are even calls in the days following being laid by Danny Williams. He's good at it and he's polite.

Even when he's not entirely focused.

He was doing fine dealing with the fact that his bisexual tendencies were roaring their dick-hungry head when he first came to Hawaii and got assaulted into a partnership with Steve. He was doing fucking peachy, alright? He had his hand and the occasional opportunity to fuck a tall, dark and handsome stranger when he was particularly desperate and couldn't stop thinking about licking Steve's stupid, cliché tattoos.

He was working on it.

But then Kono had to ruin it. Why? Because she's a demon. She's a straight up demon—a mini-Steve in training, if you will—and all she wants to do is wear bikinis, surf waves and blow shit up.

The _shit_ in this situation is Danny's life.

It went down like this:

Danny was late for work, already pissy after a fight with Rachel and not in the mood for any Five-0 bullshit. Which was precisely why he walked in to headquarters and caught Kono in the middle of her plan to ruin his mother-fucking-life.

"So you didn't screw when you were in the Navy?"

Kono was sitting on the tech-table, no matter how skinny she was—Danny was totally telling on her to Chin. Steve was eating a banana and spinning around in a desk chair like he was five years old.

"Not really," Steve said with a shrug. "On leave I'd go out but not while we were on an op."

"No one could give you a hand?"

Steve laughed. "There was the occasional hand-job but Kono, I don't fuck straight guys. Women? Sure. Straight men? Not my thing."

Kono shook her head. "What about DADT?"

"We were SEALs, brah. We had bigger things to worry about than politics," Steve said casually, and Danny was beginning to see where his disrespect for the law came from. "Beside, DADT was more a suggestion than a guideline in the SEALS. You know that, you grew up here. It was always ohana first, ops second and everything else fell away—we took care of each other."

"Yeah, hang loose, brah," Kono said with a nod, like this all made perfect sense to her warped mind. Then, because no conversation is complete without talk of mass destruction, she said, "Do you think the Governor will let me borrow the T-80?"

"I don't see why not. It's just the standard artillery tank and not the—"

Danny turned around, marched out of the building and totally _did not_ jerk off in his car.

(He totally did.)

<3<3<3

Ever since Danny found out that his boss is gay and not just, gay because he was in the NAVY but like, gay since birth and oh wait, _it's not a fucking secret_ \--he's been a little fixated.

By fixated, he means that his dick is rubbed raw all the damn time and his imagination is joining Kono in her ever present quest for world domination by destroying him with images of Steve in all sorts of compromising situations that involve Danny's dick.

He's made plenty of lists but none of them seem to help. _Things I Shouldn't Be Attracted To_ is practically a tome by now. _Steve's Faces ~~That I Want to Fuck~~_ makes him depressed. _Things Steve Finds Hot_ is mostly filled with scary details like, helicopters and high-speed chases but don't think that Danny is unobservant. He sees, okay? He fucking sees that he might make that list. But he's nowhere near ready to examine that part of the list.

There are other lists too. Lists that are just embarrassing and make him feel all twisty inside, like when he hasn't seen Gracie for a while because of Rachel and Step-Stan's busy socialite schedule. It's those lists that make Danny want to flee back to Jersey, reclaim his bi- _curiosity_ and never see a single pineapple for the rest of his godforsaken life. Those lists are kept hidden in Danny's drawer of shame, which doubles as a sidetable, and is where he keeps the lube he uses to jerk off to fantasies of Steve and the condoms he will never use because he's got too many feelings. Way too many feelings. He's got feelings enough for Steve and half of New Jersey and _Christ_ , he's turning into his Ma here.

He pulls out his couch, crawls onto the shitty mattress and tries, quite desperately, to think about anything but Steve's stupid face.

"Fucking hell," he mutters, smashing his face into the pillow and willing the anger to go.

Cause that's what it's really about, isn't it? All the anger holed up in his chest and lashing out to bite at everyone but Gracie—that's what ruined his marriage to Rachel. Sure, the job didn't help and he didn't make detective this young by just sitting on his ass. In the end, the void between him and Rachel was just full up of anger—plain old anger. That's the heart of it though. Before Gracie, Danny had never felt anything but anger. Not truly. He did feel other things, of course he did, but never without the lingering cover of his rage just boiling under the surface.

Then Grace happened and when he looks at her, her face all bright and loving, Danny feels nothing but love. He's never felt anything like it before; not when he looked at Rachel on their wedding day, not when his Ma saw him graduate from the police department—not a single moment in his life was like looking at Gracie and just letting her invade all those dark places inside of him with so much light.

Gracie makes him want to be a better person. Who doesn't want to truly become the hero their kid thinks they are? He's been working on this anger thing, it's just, it feels like he feels everything at once—one big blast of emotion that just gets all tangled together and what comes out is just ugly fury and nothing like what went in. Danny's been working on it. For Gracie.

"Stupid fuck," he says, rolling over again to stare at the ceiling.

The problem now, isn't that Danny's afraid of screwing up Grace. He still worries about that, don't read him wrong, he worries about doing lasting damaged to his baby girl's heart all the time. More than once, he's thought about quitting the force and getting some cushy job where he won't be anywhere near bullets or meth addicts, so he can go home to Gracie and make promises he absolutely knows he can keep.

If Gracie was any other kind of daughter, maybe she'd let him get away with being a selfish coward.

No. The problem isn't Gracie. It's the fact that when Danny moved here, he thought that he had tackled his biggest hurdle—getting past all his shit and putting Gracie first. But then he met Steven-fucking-McGarrett and now, goddamn it, now he wants to dig through all the anger and figure out what's underneath.

He's never felt this way before.

It just... happened with Gracie. He had to work for it after she was born and he took it all out on Rachel. Looking back, he's surprised they stayed together for so long. They had a solid five years before everything started to go to shit and then they fucked, angry and vengeful, for two more years before slowly dissolving into strangers hating each other inside the same house.

There was a lot in between. So much. But Danny spent all of it fighting back the anger just to look Gracie in the eye and do the right thing—be a better man.

Now, looking at Steve, Danny's so screwed.

He's beyond screwed because all he wants is to dig, drink, fuck or plead his way past all that boiling anger and find out what's underneath it all when it comes to Steve.

He wants to try for Steve and it scares the ever-loving-shit out of him.

<3<3<3

When Danny picks Steve up the next morning, he looks like he got laid and Danny's grinding his teeth before they make it out of the driveway.

"Catherine in town?" He doesn't sound casual at all but Steve doesn't seem to notice, staring out at the ocean as they make their way toward headquarters.

"Hmm?"

"I said," Danny forces out, "is Catherine back on land?"

Steve blinks, before smiling widely. "Nahhh."

Danny hates everything.

He speeds all the way into town and doesn't feel an ounce of pleasure when Steve gets out of the car shakily, as if Danny is a bomb.

"Danny—"

"Do not," Danny says, slamming the door. "Do not start with me today, Steven. I am not in the mood. I am so far not in the mood for whatever bullshit you got going on right now that it's actually pretty astounding how much I don't want to look at you right now. So, let me just say this. If you and your goofy-I-just-got-laid face get me shot today because you're off in la-la land reliving your wild night of super-SEAL sex then I will literally kidnap my daughter off this wretched island and be back on the mainland before you can say haole, you _mother-fucker_."

He storms into headquarters and doesn't look back.

It's eight-fifteen. So much for that anger business.

<3<3<3

"What'd you do to bossman?"

Danny looks up from the paperwork, notice how it's just _paperwork_ and not _his_ paperwork, only to find Kono looking at him like he made a deal with Poseidon to get rid of all the waves in the entire world.

"What?"

Kono wrinkles her forehead and crosses her arms. "Steve won't give me hand to hand because he's grumpy and he wasn't grumpy when I left him last, asshole."

"Who you callin'—"

"You," she says, cocking her hip and snarling at him. "I'm calling you an asshole! He was fine when we met up to catch some waves at dawn, next thing I know, you're hauling into HQ like someone pissed on your malasades and Steve looks like you took away his rocket launcher. I know how he feels about his rocket launcher, Danny. He really loves that thing."

Danny hates this. He hates how Kono is unafraid of anyone. He hates how she reads people so well, better than Chin, and just storms into anyone's office to push her way into their personal business. Chin? He's a wait-and-see sort of cop. He's the kind who's right there and ready to save your ass, look at you smugly while you get a bandage wrapped around your face and say, "I told you so." Kono? She's not that kind of cop. She's the kind of cop who breaks into your house and lies in wait, pouncing on you when you've turned out the lights and you're only wearing your underwear. She's as if fear didn't exist and then someone gave it breasts.

"Leave it alone, Kono," Danny says tiredly. He's got a fucking headache that mountains of caffeine couldn't cure. "Just—listen, it's not my fault McGarrett's in a mood. Does it look like I care? Does it look like I give a damn about him right now? No. Why? Because I'm doing his damn paperwork for the hundredth time, trying to figure out colorful euphemisms for _tortured at the hands of the state_ and I'm too fucking busy to notice or, you know _care_ , if your crazy-buddy is not feeling like playing with you today, kiddo."

Silence greets him. Danny feels his eyebrow twitch.

"Kono—"

"No. It's fine," she says, voice as cold as steel. "I'll do the fucking paperwork, Williams."

Before he can open his mouth and apologize, she's grabbing half of the papers on his desk and tearing through the door like she's going to beat the truth out of a perp with those papers, stuff them down someone's throat and then go in to get them with a sharp hook normally used to kill sharks.

She slams her own office door and Danny puts his head down on the desk.

He attempts to breathe.

<3<3<3

Chin appears at his door not twenty minutes later.

"Is there something wrong?"

Danny looks up from his cold cup of coffee. "I did a thing."

"A thing?"

Danny pinches the bridge of his nose and leans back in his chair. Chin is leaning against the doorjamb like nothing is wrong, even though Danny is 100% sure he stopped by Kono's office and got shouted at.

"Yes," Danny sighs out. "I did a thing and now I'm in trouble."

Chin squints. "Do you... want to talk about it?"

"Absolutely not."

Danny loves that Chin looks relieved. Even with all of Chin's family baggage and Internal Affairs constantly breathing down his neck for one thing or another, Chin is a relatively balanced human being. It's a beautiful thing to behold.

There are a few beats of silence before Chin taps his foot on the ground and says, "I've got a thing."

"Does it involve the beach?" Because Danny doesn't think his fragile mental state could take the beach right now.

"No."

"Hit me."

Chin shrugs. "Couple years back, guy raped and assaulted a friend of mine and then skipped town before we could get a warrant."

"Bastard," Danny murmurs. Chin nods.

"He just showed back up, hanging out at his old haunt like I would forget."

"Dumb bastard."

"Wanna go pick him up?"

Danny looks down at the paper work on his desk. It's not going to do itself. Then again, it's been sitting here for a couple of weeks and no one has been breaking down his door for it. He looks at his cold cup of coffee and then back at Chin, who arches an eyebrow.

"He's a rapist?"

"Nasty, smug son-of-a-bitch, brah."

"He doesn't have a thing for explosives? Is he a terrorist? Or, I dunno, does he have fire that comes out his eyes or anything remotely psycho other than he doesn't know that no means no? Which, believe me, is enough."

Chin grins. "He's just a perp, Danny—just a nasty bastard that has it coming."

"Chin Ho Kelly, you are a good man."

Danny stands up, throws his coffee into the trash and grabs his keys.

"I'm driving," Danny says sternly but Chin is already out the door.

A good ol'fashioned perp who needs to be roughed up and brought in? This is exactly what Danny needs. Just... police work. Not talking about his feelings. Not getting grenades thrown at him. Not riding in a car with Steve or getting a lecture from Kono.

If he walks a little faster by the other offices on his way out, he doesn't notice it.

<3<3<3

The bust is routine. Gloriously routine.

"Is there a window in there?" Danny asks as he checks the door knob of the bathroom.

"Don't think so," Chin responds, looking around the bar and clearing most of the patrons out with a casual nudge of his gun in their direction.

"How do you think this is gonna end for you?" Danny yells into the bathroom. "You gotta come out eventually and let me tell you pal, I've got nowhere to be. I could sit here all damn day and wait to shoot your ass, or you could come out now and I'll only let Kelly punch you once or twice for being a lousy human being."

"Fuck you!"

Danny nods. "I see where you're coming from but I'm not really interested in what you got to offer. Did you see what I did there? No means no, Mr. Davidson. No means no. Now, if you understand this, then you'll come out and go to prison like a good little bastard. If you don't understand what it means when a fine little lady like myself says no, then you should just stay in there and we'll reiterate the lesson."

There is a frustrated pause and then Danny feels Chin's presence beside him.

"You sure feel like talking now," Chin mutters, a smile plastered on his face as he nods to the door handle, which is jiggling.

"Are we doing this now? Is this going to be a thing? Because let me clue you in on something, Kelly, I pay a guy to listen to my problems and not judge me. So, I don't really need to do this. Also, I'm holding a gun and I've already got so many things that I don't really need one with you."

"Hey lady, you're the one projecting here," Chin says before he kicks down the door and tackles Mr. Davidson, who is howling like a madman, to the ground.

Somehow, Danny gets a boot and an elbow to the chest during the ensuing scuffle but it's enough to make him ignore the excessive force Chin uses when installing the cuffs. If Davidson pees blood for a few days, it's the least he can suffer for giving Danny a nasty bruise blooming on his sternum. He doesn't bother to look at it as they drag the perp down to HPD's headquarters but he can _feel it_ and he knows it's going to be pretty ugly. Luckily, it means he won't have to go to the beach with Rachel and Step-Stan this weekend. Unexplained bruises suspiciously shaped like a rapist's boot tend to make Gracie frown—although it's the most adorable frown in the entire world—and that means he can wear his suit and his tie to the beach to pick up his daughter, instead of having to spend a morning watching Rachel and Stan hold hands and skip in the sparkling sunlight.

He rubs his chest all the way back to Five-0 headquarters, sharing a satisfied grin with Chin and not, _not_ , thinking about what awaits him back inside.

<3<3<3

Rachel's ringtone blares from his pocket and yes, he realizes it's a sign of just how sad it is that he would rather take her phone call than step in to deal with Kono and Steve—but give him a break, okay? Kono is scary and Steve... well, Steve's face is not something Danny can deal with right now. A man's got to have limits, alright?

"I'll be in after I'm done," Danny mutters but Chin's already rolling his eyes.

"You're a coward!"

Danny laughs, leaning back on the Camaro. "Kono's been sharpening her knives, Kelly. Don't patronize me! I just caught bad-guys with you."

Chin laughs, waving him off and disappears into HQ just as Danny answers the phone.

"What do I owe the pleasure of this surely—"

"Danno!"

He grins, stupid and happy because, hey, his little girl is cute. "Gracie, my darling, my light, my life! How was school?"

"Totally epic."

Danny frowns. "Is that a word you learned from Tommy? Because, babe, I've got a feeling that Tommy isn't so smart. In fact, I know he's not. He's probably lost all his brain cells from surfing at too young an age. You hear me?"

"Daaaad," Grace drawls, whining and excited. "Guess what happened today?"

"Alright, alright. Did you work on your spelling?"

"Spelling is boring. This is better."

Danny scuffs his shoe against a rock and hums, hamming it up for Grace. "What in the world is better than spelling, my dear?"

"Mr. Hoppy and another bunny _wrestled_!"

You know when you know, beyond all doubt, that something bad is going to happen but you can't see which direction it's coming from?

"They wrestled?"

"Yeah! Mr. Hoppy was playing in his pen when someone brought another bunny. Her name was Abby and Mr. Hoppy didn't like her so he tackled her and wrestled her to the ground," Gracie said, excitedly, as if she was giving him a play-by-play of the latest Yankees game.

"Whoa. Okay? Listen, Mr. Hoppy clearly has aggression issues—"

"Dannnnoooo, Steve said if I don't like someone I should just tell him and he'll take care of them. He meant tackling didn't he? Dad, Steve is so cool."

And that is exactly what Danny needs right now, the image of Steve tackling someone to the ground and humping them. This is why children shouldn't have pets. Ever. She's probably scarred for the rest of her life and years down the line, Danny's going to explain just what kind of _wrestling_ Mr. Hoppy was doing and totally ruin her innocence.

"Gracie, baby girl, Steve is not cool. Steve is a maniac. Steve thinks tackling is appropriate because nobody hugged him or gave him rabbits as a child," Danny said firmly. "Also, if anyone will be tackling anyone, especially that little twerp Tommy, it's going to be me."

"Nobody hugged him? Danno," Gracie says, seriously, completely ignoring Danny's last comment, "you should hug Steve more. You give the best hugs."

His heart! God, what she does to his heart!

"I think Steve would like getting hugs from you better," he says, because what else is there to say? Of course he wants to hug Steve! Hell, he wants to tackle him to the ground Mr. Hoppy-style too but that's neither here nor there. His daughter, apparently, has a thing for wounded souls and strays.

"When I come over this weekend, can we hang out with Steve?"

Danny wants to say no. He wants to say that Steve is the last man he wants to see on his days off and that no, Steve will not encroach on his father-daughter bonding moments. But that would all be a lie. Danny doesn't like lying to his daughter. That's gross. That's what bad fathers do—lie to their children and totally damage them from ever having appropriate displays of feelings for the rest of their lives. (Mary and Steve are so screwed up. They're like the model of all things Danny doesn't want his Gracie to be when she grows up.)

"Sure, babe. I'll ask him and we'll do something fun," Danny says, sighing in defeat.

"And you'll hug him?"

She sounds so hopeful, so sure that hugs could cure Steve—hell, that they could cure Danny—that he says yes. Why? Because he loves his daughter. Also? He's a masochist and it's been a long time since he's called his mother to cry but hey, this weekend is as good as any time to weep to your mother about your insane life on islands where she refuses to vacation. His ma is still bitter about not being able to see Gracie all the damn time.

"Yeah, Gracie. I'll hug him. He'll probably need us both to hug him after I get done with him," Danny says, making his way across the parking lot and into the building.

"Is Steve being naughty again?"

Danny cringes. "Babe, do me a favor? Don't say that word again, it makes it sound like your grandma-England."

She giggles across the line. "Don't be mean to Steve. He's not as good at following the rules as you are, Danno."

He's smiling, soft and soppy and totally hating his daughter for being so right, even when she has no idea what's going on. She's perfect. He can't believe they're related she's so fucking perfect.

The smile slides right off his face as soon as he can see into the main room of HQ.

"Gracie, I got to go."

"To catch the bad guys?"

"Yeah, babe—Danno's got to save the world," he says warily but Gracie doesn't seem to notice. She cheerily signs off and Danny is left with the scene in front of him.

Danny looks at the way Kono is throwing knives. Normally, this would just be creepy instead of scary but she's throwing them in the general direction of Steve and she's got her bitch face on. It's the face she wears when tackling 300-pound gun runners—all blank faced rage and crazy eyes that she most definitely learned from Steve.

Technically, Steve totally deserves to get knives thrown at him. There are so many reasons. So many.

He proceeds with caution.

"What do you mean it was an accident?" Kono pauses, knife in her hand as Steve, calm as can be, just stands there.

"Um, it was an accident?"

Kono whirls around to face Danny, throwing up her hands (which, for the record are still waving around a fucking knife that looks like it could butcher wild hogs from _sight alone_ ) and making this scrunched up face that says, _Can you believe this guy?_. Danny tries to look affronted, mostly he's just terrified he'll get knifed by accident, but it seems to satisfy Kono, who turns her wrath back onto Steve. Danny is assuming that they're ignoring the little incident from this morning. Thank fuck.

"An accident? How do you fuck someone accidentally?"

Aaaand there goes all the thanks he has. Danny thinks he might stroke out.

Kono? She doesn't give a shit. Steve is still cool as a cucumber, staring death in the face and probably winking at it.

Danny is scared for him. He can admit that. He's a big enough man.

"Kono—"

"Seriously, did he trip and fall on your dick? I'm having a problem with the logistics here, Commander."

Danny blinks, the room going stark white for a moment because he's having a godforsaken aneurysm right the fuck now.

Steve tilts his head, face SEAL-blank and emotionless, as if he's considering the answer and not, you know, thinking about ways to disarm his crazed protegee. Danny starts to hyperventilate a little. Mostly because having this conversation with Steve is something that Danny has been avoiding and he really, really does not want to watch Steve die by the hands of Kono. She's _messy_ and even though Danny would really like it if Steve went away so that he wouldn't have to deal with the complete and total way his dick wants inside that man—he doesn't think murder is the answer.

It's a little extreme. _God_ , his life is a little extreme.

"Come on," Kono says snidely. "Tell me how you accidentally fuck my first boyfriend. Did he fall off his fucking surfboard and land on your dick?"

The moment before Steve opens his mouth, Danny knows it's going to be terrible. He's got this face—this face that says, _Look at me! I'm an adorable puppy and I'm going to piss in your shoes. RIGHTNOW_.

"Technically, I'm the one who tripped onto his—"

Thank God for Chin Ho Kelly, who comes into the room and tackles Kono to the ground before the rage can fully transform and transduce into throwing the knife at Steve's smug face. Kono is kicking as Chin tries to get the knife out of her grip but she's not putting up a real fight. Mostly, they just wrestle on the ground for a while as Kono whines and says things like: _I wasn't gonna kill him, cuz_ and _Bossman deserved it_. Danny watches in shock as Steve, insane adrenaline junkie from hell, removes the knives from the doorframe and takes a call on his phone, looking a bit sheepish but otherwise blank.

Like this was a non-event.

Danny turns, walks back into his office and crawls underneath the desk to process.

It's clear that denial, although efficient for most, isn't going to work this time. Danny is going to have to re-evaluate and... evolve.

Or something.

"What the fuck." Danny says into his knees and slowly lets his mind go over what _exactly_ just happened.

<3<3<3

Thankfully, criminals don't stop committing crimes simply because three-fourths of the Governor’s task force is barely restraining themselves from murdering each other. An AmberAlert goes up on North Shore just as the radio silence breaks, crackling to life and announcing two officers down at a possible arson scene. Kono takes the missing kid, jumping into an SUV and speeds off with only a few terse glances at Steve. (Danny is not thinking about Ben, Kono's first boyfriend, who apparently went gay for Steve a couple of times. He does not think about it at all.) The three of them head out to the parking lot to grab vehicles to pursue the probable cop-killing. Danny thinks about asking to ride bitch with Chin but is saved from actually opening his mouth when Steve jumps into his truck, mutters something about the Governor and speeds off, taking the corner on two wheels.

"Slow down you fucking freak!" Danny yells, because he can't help himself.

Chin raises an eyebrow and Danny throws up his hands in defeat.

"He wasn't even wearing a _seatbelt_ ," Danny mutters, slipping into the driver's seat and pulling out with Chin laughing in his rearview mirror.

"I hope you eat bugs."

<3<3<3

Chin secures the two officers, waiting on the ambulance and watching the front of the house. Danny goes around the back of the blazing fire, he's not going in there because he's sane and not flame retardant but he wants to at least make an effort here.

He comes around the corner only to get clocked in the knee, his good one, by a man so old that one good gust of wind looks like it'd kill him. He's down, clutching his knee and cursing as the old man swings back the baseball bat to hit him again.

Lucky for Danny, because the universe takes pity on his soul, the guy sees the flash of his badge and pulls up short.

"Police?" He asks in heavily accented English, before gesturing to the house and starting to yell.

"Thank Christ," Danny mumbles, waiting for his knee to start turning colors.

This day, _this fucking day_.

<3<3<3

The EMT makes fun of him the entire time. The fire department says it's probably arson and they're all looking at each other like it's going to be a long week. They really have no idea. Apparently, this type of arson is more in tune with the style of serial arsonists—like serial killers except with fire. Danny wants to know who in the world doesn't want to burn down old man Koi's house because he is one mean bastard.

He stares down at his knee and winces. It's turning a deep shade of purple that will be black tomorrow.

"You're lucky it wasn't your bad knee," the EMT says calmly. "You'd have to have surgery."

"I'm feeling real lucky right now," Danny replies, deadpan.

The EMT shrugs before walking off to make sure the two officers with bad smoke inhalation are doing alright, leaving Danny with a bag of quickly melting ice on his knee.

The scene is general pandemonium, fire still smoldering and people gawking behind the police tape. Danny scans the crowd a little, trying to remember faces. Seems these type of perps like to watch the drama unfold afterwards, which bodes well for Danny because that means they are smug psychos and isn't that just what he needs right now?

Eventually, the painkillers they give him kick in and he can walk, aided by cane, with minimal shooting, stabby pain to his knee. He finds Chin and gets an HPD officer to record the faces of the crowd, collecting cameras and phones for good measure.

"Got a text from Kono, said it's all clear on her side," Chin says and Danny shakes his head.

"I guess we better go back and see if they've killed each other yet."

Chin squints at him. "Brah, my money is on Kono."

Danny has HPD take Chin's bike back to HQ and makes him drive the Camaro.

<3<3<3

Danny expects to get to HQ and find just rubble where it used to stand. In the place of carnage, he finds Kono and Steve eating shave ice and cleaning guns together, smiling at each other every so often and being completely buddy-buddy.

"Whoa, did I miss something?"

Kono looks up from where she's cleaning a rifle to frown at him.

"You miss a lot of things, brah," she says a little coldly. And yes, that means her earlier reprieve about this morning is gone with her aggression toward Steve, leaving Danny confused and a little miffed that Steve got off with only knife throwing. Kono will probably keep this grudge for a good two weeks and possibly try to drown him during their next surfing lesson.

"You get the kid?" Chin says, coming out of nowhere like he has ninja training. "Because we've got a potential serial arsonist."

Kono and Steve's eyes light up. Danny needs another painkiller.

"Yeah," Steve says, "the kid is safe. What's this about an—"

Danny holds up his hand, leaning on his cane. "Can we just, back up a bit here? Please? For the sake of my sanity. I mean, I understand that you all have emotional issues, deep seated emotional issues that will keep the shrinks of this island in business until the day you all stop getting lucky and actually get yourselves killed. But me? I'm not like that. I need closure."

Kono scrunches up her face like closure has personally offended her. Steve blinks, perplexity crossing his face like Danny just told him it's snowing outside.

Danny sighs. "You were throwing knives at Steve this morning and now, you guys are—" He wraps his middle and pointer finger together, holds them up in the air and shakes them.

She shrugs and reassembles her gun with a few flicks of her wrist, bumping her shoulder against Steve's. "I was being a hypocrite and bossman was being an ass. We got over it. You want to talk about our feelings, Jersey? Because that's workplace harassment."

"You, both of you, know nothing about workplace harassment," Danny objects. Danny has been too afraid to schedule the trainings.

"Danny, everything is fine," Steve says, striping a Glock in no time and smiling, toothily. "We worked it out."

Danny looks at Chin, who just grins back like this is normal, acceptable behavior. Danny wants to shoot him for taking this in stride. He really does. Why? Because then someone would be suffering at just about the same level as he is and that _might_ make him feel marginally better about his life.

"Why do I get the feeling that _worked it out_ means there are bullet holes somewhere I can't see and someone got punched in the face?" Danny sasses backs because seriously? Come on.

Kono pouts. "I only hit him once. Plus, we're even now."

With that, they both look mildly uncomfortable.

Chin starts laughing and Danny feels so out of the loop, more so than normal, and doesn’t like the feeling one bit.

"What? What! What is happening right now?" He says to Chin but Chin just nods to Kono.

"You finally told him?"

She swipes at her nose, like a gangster thug, and shrugs. "Hey, it happens, alright."

"What happens?"

Kono looks from Chin to Danny, back to Steve and then stands up. "I banged his sister. I do chicks sometimes, it happens."

All Danny can hear is white noise. He needs to go back to his office and make some lists to make solid sense of anything that has happened today. He needs paper and a pen and—

"You alright, brah?"

But Danny doesn't have time to reply before Chin is high-fiving Kono and saying, "I'm feeling left out, cuz. I'm the only one here without a homo-agenda. It's like we're the queer crime-fighting team and I'm that boring straight guy no one likes."

Danny wants to kill Chin. He really does because Chin's doing that thing, where he's already figured something out that no one else has and he's been keeping it to himself, until it slips out. Of course Chin is clued in on Danny's issue with Steve and the wanting and the cocks and the _feelings_ but because Chin is a good man, he's been keeping it to himself. Now, now he's airing Danny's dirty laundry in front of everyone and Danny needs to kill someone or make a list—like yesterday.

Kono is laughing, completely missing Chin's slip up and is making jokes about gay super heroes while doing some sort of cuz-ritual with Chin that Danny supposes means that he's proud of her. When Danny chances a glance at Steve, he's got his Constipated Hamster face on and Danny's 95% sure he's been made like fucking Minute Maid.

"So," Kono says, looking between Danny's unmoving body and Steve's face. "Serial arsonist?"

Chin clears his throat. "Yeah, and an 93 year old Japanese man with one hell of a swing."

Danny cringes and pulls up his trouser leg, then all hell breaks loose.

<3<3<3

By the time Steve has stopped hollering, Danny is all but duck-taped to a wheelchair that he's fairly sure Steve stole from someone who really needs it because the man is a crazy person. There is probably some elderly man or woman who has just been traumatized and will now go to an early grave having been assaulted by a gun-toting SEAL.

"Can I just say, once again, that I am perfectly fine?"

Danny gets no response. Steve has been lecturing Chin about _no brah left behind, brah_ for a solid twenty minutes after having a complete and total meltdown about Danny's knee. (He's ignoring the gentle way Steve's calloused fingers had palpated his tender bruise and what that did to Danny's chest. He's ignoring the way Steve is freaking out because he cares, looking like a wounded puppy when he tries to connect the dots and blame himself for the old Japanese man's affinity for baseball bats and a swing first, ask questions later attitude. He's ignoring all of it because he's had more than one revelation today and he really just wants to go home, drink a beer and forget where he lives.)

Kono is combing through the video footage from the arson scene because she's still mad at Danny (don't even get him started) and has lost interest in anything that has to do with him.

It's six o'clock, he's hungry and in pain and no one is really speaking to him.

It takes him a little while but he slowly rolls his wheelchair into his office and closes the door, shutting out the noise of Chin and Steve (still talking but Danny has lost the thread of their conversation) and Kono's frowny-thinking face (which shouldn't be noisy but is because she's Kono). He sighs, thinks about all the list he's going to make in the privacy of his own home and falls asleep, too exhausted and blissed out on painkillers to move to the couch.

<3<3<3

Painkillers make his brain fuzzy when he first wakes. His mouth is dry, like he's back in college waking up after three bong hits and a bag of Cheetos. His neck hurts, twisted at an odd angle and he has to pee. Did he mention that his knee still throbs painfully? Or how about his chest?

"Jesus-fuck," Danny groans, turning his wheelchair around to find Steve, all six-foot-three of him, looming in the doorway. He's got his "I-have-Daddy-issues" face on but that can't be right, so Danny blinks and when he refocuses, it's a little bit better—the "My-guilt-complex-is-immense" face suits the situation a little better.

Danny should wheel himself to a taxi and go home to his lonely, one-bedroom shit hole and sleep for days. He should call Rachel and rearrange the schedule so Grace won't have to see him so beat-to-hell. He should let the painkillers and details of Grace's day lull him to sleep. He should just let it go.

Enough emotional bullshit for one day and all.

Instead he says, "Come on, I'll let you take me home."

He gets a raised eyebrow, as if McGarrett has no idea that Danny's onto him, but then his face gets all scrunched up and stupid, shifting through all his ridiculous faces until it finally lands on his standard, blank-SEAL face.

His shoulders are all slumped, dejected in the teenage-hormonal sort of way that he gets when Steve has manly angst.

Danny would know. He's feel the same way.

"Right, let's go," Danny says, running over Steve's foot and making his way toward the door.

Steve follows at more sedate pace, creepy and stalker like, until Danny hauls himself into the Camaro's passenger seat.

Steve looks pissed. Danny rolls his eyes. "Go give that wheelchair back to whoever you stole it from, freak."

He slams the door.

<3<3<3

Danny's asleep before Steve comes back and the drive back to his house is silent. Lt. Commander McAbs is brooding, all dark and handsome and distracting Danny from the facts of the day, as he slips in and out of sleep. His knee hurts less than he thought it would, only a dull ache but his chest feels like it's on fire and he's half afraid of what he's going to find when he unbuttons his shirt. He might still have some Bengay (hilarious, really) or Vicks in his medicine cabinet at home that will ease a little bit of the suffering. If it feels awful now, it's really going to hurt like a son-of-a-bitch tomorrow and oh, isn't that a pleasant thought.

Except, the next time he opens his eyes, he's not on the way to his shitty apartment.

"Steve—"

"Can we just not, I mean, Jesus Danny, can you just shut up?" He growls it out, not taking his eyes off the road for a change and Danny shifts to get a better look at him. His jaw is tight and his hands are white-knuckled from his grip on the steering wheel.

Danny sighs. They keep driving.

Steve attempts to help him out of the car. The ensuing argument is conducted mostly with glares, flailing arms and grunting. By the time Danny is halfway to the house, Steve is already inside, banging things around and pouting—like he's the one who was beat up by the geriatric ward.

He's literally seconds from sinking down onto Steve's couch when he shows back up in the doorway, arms crossed and a scowl firmly planted on his face.

"Don't sit down."

Danny rolls his eyes. "I'm a fucking gimp right now and you want to fight with me?"

"Danny, the couch is not gonna be good for your knee. Will you just hobble yourself up the stairs?"

Danny wants to argue. He should be on the couch and not anywhere near Steve's bed, which is _apparently_ so prone to gay sex that it might actually kill him but he looks up from the couch to see Steve, face pinched and scowly, and so he caves. If anyone asks, it's because of the painkillers.

It takes Danny ten minutes to get up the stairs. Surprisingly, Steve doesn't fire-man carry him up the stairs—nor does he hover, tutting behind him. Instead, Steve is busy doing something in the kitchen until, magically, Danny makes it up to the top of the stairs and Steve appears.

"You're sleeping in my room," he says sternly, pointing down the hall. "None of the other beds have clean sheets."

Danny scoffs, feeling a slightly bitter and more than a little winded from the climb. "And your sheets are clean? I'm supposed to believe that after this morning?"

Steve blinks. "Yes?"

"Right, of course, cause that would make so much sense," Danny bitches, dragging his body down the hallway. "You would change your sheets, all ninja-like, after—is that a military thing? Are you going to be up at like four in the fucking morning vacuuming the hallway or something? Because let me tell you something, asshole, I will not stand for it. Not enough painkillers in the world will make me put up with your OCD, Naval Academy bullshit."

Steve doesn't really seem to be listening and that's fine with Danny because he doesn't really know what he's saying. It feels good to mindlessly rant.

Steve's room isn't particularly personal but at least it looks like he cleared out his dad's old stuff and replaced it with new things that don't have horrid memories attached to them—not like the rest of the house but Danny can dream. The bed is large, a California King at least, and Danny almost smiles because of course Steve would indulge after years of living in the jungle or in barracks or where the fuck he was living during his years as a G.I. Joe. There isn't a comforter, just pale blue sheets that Danny doesn't hesitate to sink down onto. He sits, groaning a little at the relief, and stares out of the balcony doors.

"This bed is divine," he says, resisting any and all desires to flop onto it, curl up and never leave. That train of thought leads to madness—or at least a further embarked course of madness that Danny is nowhere near ready to address. He's barely past _I'm extra gay for Steve more_ and _Steve's a homo-ninja_. His head is nowhere near above water. He hasn't even had time to decide if he's repressing the events of today or not.

"Kono and Chin are checking out a lead," Steve says from behind him. "There was an arson HPD handled a couple weeks ago that might be linked."

Danny doesn't turn around. "You should go. I know you want to, you control freak. I'm not going anywhere."

There's silence behind him. Not the thinky-kind but the awkward kind and this, _this_ , is exactly why Danny has never let himself fall for a co-worker. If he could turn back time and tell himself one thing, other than the lotto numbers, it would be _Be on your guard, Danno. Navy SEALS are not to be trusted with anything but explosives. No. Seriously. Stop it trying to give that man your heart. Stop it right now._

"Nahhhh," Steve drawls, in a forced sort of casualness that makes Danny unsure how he ever got through under-cover ops. "I'd rather stay here and work out my control issues on you."

Danny laughs, it's rough and humorless, making him rub at his chest because it hurts. "I'm in no mood, Steven. I've got a boot-print the size of a smug-rapist, which for your information is big—very big and my knee feels like it wants to secede from the union _of my body_. I just want to sleep. I want to sleep forever—"

"Wait, what's wrong with your chest?"

Danny is going to reply but is stopped by Steven-fucking-McGarrett's coming around the bed, pushing him down and unbuttoning his shirt at a speed that is truly unnatural. Danny's in shock. Really. All he can seem to think about is the cool slide of Steve's hands, how soft the bed is beneath him and that furrow of Steve's brow that Danny desperately wants to rub with his thumb.

He's losing his mind.

"You didn't say anything about a rapist, fucking-Christ Danny," Steve spits out, his hand running over the bruises a little too roughly and Danny twists, hissing.

"That hurts, dickhead," he says, because he's twelve and high on painkillers, emotionally stunted and just a little bit hard.

"Danny," Steve breathes out. "This looks awful."

His voice is all soft, worried and kind of breathy, making the rest of the braincells Danny has firing to just melt into a puddle of Steve-charmed goo. He moves his hands to still Steve's, which are still too rough on his bruise.

"You know it looks worse than it feels."

"Does it?"

But Steve's face is so open that Danny looks away, looks at the smattering of truly black bruising on his chest and then says, "Nope. It hurts like a bitch."

"Get up on the bed properly," Steve says after a minute, his voice still soft around the edges and so Danny obeys. He shucks his shirt off the rest of the way and pulls his tie until it comes undone. By the time he leans back against the headboard, Steve is already back with a bottle of Vicks in his hands.

"I didn't have Bengay," Steve says, sorrowfully, like Danny is going to drown kittens because of it.

"It's fine," he replies. What else is he supposed to say? This face, whatever expression is etched into Steve's face is new and he really can't deal with anything but himself right now. "Give it here."

Steve shakes his head, all stubborn without sense. "You won't do it right," he says, climbing onto the bed and not giving Danny anytime to protest before he slathers the sticky substance all over Danny's bruise.

The moan that comes out of his mouth is completely out-of-character and _not_ Danny's fault.

It's just... Steve's hands are gentle, working the Vicks into his chest with tiny little circles of his fingers and Danny is memorized by the way Steve's cuticles catch on his chest hair, or the way his tongue sticks out as he frowns in concentration. On top of the fact that Steve's _hands_ are touching his bare skin, the Vicks feels good on the bruise, like it's lifting the pressure and achy pain from his chest. There is also the fact that the wrinkled frown in between his eyebrows is still there and Danny wants to kiss it. It's all very distracting.

Not nearly as distracting as Steve running his fingers over Danny's nipples— _his nipples for God's sake_ — and sucking in a breath when they harden underneath his care, like he didn't know it would happen like that because it's not like they're nipples or anything—like Danny is just one big-fucking-surprise.

Danny shakes his head and tries to breathe but it feels a little ragged.

"You get checked out?"

"It's fine," Danny chokes out, "just some bruising."

The scowl on Steve's face deepens. He continues working the Vicks in, finally finishing with a few careful swipes at Danny's chest (and totally going for the nipples again, don't think that Danny didn't notice) before he takes his hands away and simply scowls down at Danny's chest.

Then,

"Take off your pants," he says before disappearing.

Danny leans over to grab a glass of water and two painkillers from his prescription bottle. In a feat of desperation, he toes off his shoes and shucks his trousers, only to find evidence of his feelings for Steve staring back at him because everything about his body is betraying him. Why is that? Why does his body like Steve more than it likes sanity? Hmm? Why dammit. He wiggles under the covers, breath ragged, and turns onto his side just as Steve comes back from the bathroom.

Danny doesn't squeak when Steve slides into bed. He doesn't.

"I always imagined you'd sleep on the right side of the bed," Steve says into the darkness.

"What?"

He moves, turning over and wiggling to get comfortable and Danny glares daggers at the balcony. His mind is still stuck on the fact that Steve is actually in bed with him, he's got a hard on and he's in a fair amount of pain. He really wishes he would have kept his pants on.

Steve clears his throat. "I just, you know, I thought you'd be on this side."

Something twists, dark and nasty inside his chest. What the fuck is wrong with Steve? What is wrong with him? He huffs, curling in on himself and clutching the pillow like it could possibly save him from himself or Steve or Hawaii in general.

"Look, I'm sorry if I ruined your plans tonight. But in my defense, I didn't ask you to take me back here and mollycoddle me like my fuckin' Ma—"

"Mollycoddle? Really, Jersey?"

Danny huffs, pulling the sheet tighter around him. "I'm trying to apologize here, alright? So shut up and accept that I'm sorry if I ruined your plans with Ben tonight. I didn't mean to get beaten up, unlike you, who go head first into dangerous situations, just assuming someone will take care of your sorry ass afterwards. I am a normal and sane human being who does not expect to get demolished on the job and so, again, I offer my apologies for co-opting your time for taking care of my, very minor, injuries, when you could be doing things that incur the wrath of Kono. I know how much you like that."

See? This is the problem with Steve. He's handsy and puppy-dog faces and _Danno_ right from the get-go and yet, anytime there is talk of anything that can't be fixed with grenades or napalm, he reverts back to the silent-military type like he's been burned before and Danny just kind of hates everything. Most of all he hates that he still wants Steven, still wants to put aside all his rage and hug-it-out or something... dick-it-out. Whatever. It's clear that even though there are so many fucking Daddy-issues inside Steve's heart, there's something else too that keeps him from functioning like a normal individual with a vast array of emotions. Sure, Danny's got all sorts of issues with his feelings, but at least he knows it. He knows where it comes from and he's working on it, okay? He's got a nasty suspicion that Steve doesn't understand why he feels too much, or not at all, or how he just stuffs everything in a dark corner of his chest, goes into Super-SEAL _I'm being tortured_ headspace and calls it a day. Apparently, addressing his feelings is like going to Gitmo. Of course it is.

Danny sure knows how to pick 'em.

He doesn't talk into the silence like he wants to. He doesn't fill up the painful, blank silence with anger or just rambling. He wants to but he resists. Instead, he just breathes, uncomfortable and pissed off and just a little bit high.

"Ben? What are you talking about?"

Danny flails his hand out. "You know what I'm talking about, Steven. Did I just hallucinate that experience, you know, where Kono tried to inflict major bodily harm because you were shtupping her first boyfriend or making the _entire island gay_ by dazzling them with your shirtlessness and your complete and total disregard for real things like police procedures? This isn't Gitmo, buddy. I mean, you were—"

"Danny," Steve interrupts, again, grabbing Danny's waving hand and holding onto it just a little bit too hard. "What—"

"We really doing this now?"

"Are you high?"

"Give me back my hand!" Danny yells, tugging on his hand but Steve won't let go. "Steven, let it go. _Let me go_ , you neanderthal."

"I'm not tupping—"

"Shtupping, you nudnik," Danny corrects automatically because what else is he supposed to do?

"Okay, Danny, okay. I just—" Steve stops and breathes against the back of his neck, making it perfectly clear just how close he is. Sometime in the short snippet of conversation he had plastered himself up against Danny's back like a freakin' octopus and now Danny is subject to goosebumps and warm breath against the soft hairs of his nape.

It feels fantastic, causing Danny to shiver underneath the covers.

"You cold?"

Danny snorts, pulling weakly where Steve still has his hand. "It's Hawaii, dumbass. It's like seventy degrees right now."

Steve huffs. Danny _can feel it_.

If he wasn't already lying down, Danny's sure he'd be lightheaded and blaming it all on the painkillers. As it is, he's practically trembling with Steve plastered to his back and holding his hand. Surreal.

"Can I have my hand back?"

There is a pause and Danny imagines the slow blink that Steve's probably got going on. He tugs a little, reminding him what he's talking about. Steve sighs against his neck and makes a small, unhappy sound that sounds a little like when Gracie accidentally left her Slinky in the driveway and Danny backed over it with his car.

"No," Steve says firmly. "No, you can't."

Then, because he's absurd and Danny has lost control over his life, Steve brings both their hands down until they're resting on the mattress, cocooned around Danny's waist and hips.

"What—"

"Jesus Christ," Steve hisses, "would you just shut up and go to sleep?"

Danny wants to protest but before he can't get anything out, Steve is squeezing his hand like they're fifteen and on their first date at the movie theater—terrified that if they do _anything_ someone's dad is going to pop out of a closet and lecture them using diagrams. Danny feels another wave of dizziness go through him and concentrates of the rhythm of Steve's breathing, hoping to regulate the amount of air going to his brain.

By the time he calms down enough to berate Steve into answering the question about Ben or figuring exactly, maybe even with a fucking map, how they got here—whatever it is going on between them—Steve's asleep and Danny gives in to the pull of the painkillers, chasing dreams before the next breath hits them.

<3<3<3

Danny has a list for mornings. He has a list of _The Best Ways to Wake Up_ and lately, the top of that list has been mostly populated by very strong coffee, Kono in a bathing suit (even if she has ill intentions that involve Danny in the water) and Gracie, screaming about Hannah Montana or some other such nonsense.

Groping hasn't seen the top of the list in a while.

It's on the hypothetical list, along with Stan being blown up by terrorists, the tectonic plates shifting so drastically that Jersey is magically next to Hawaii and, more recently, various naughty things involving his partner's Navy-trained, Hawaii sunned, body. But that's the thing, isn't it? It's a _hypothetical_ list. It's not real. These things, on this list, aren't supposed to happen.

Danny's head is pretty fuzzy from the painkillers and his chest feels like he's been run over by a shipping container full of Chinese immigrants but he's fairly certain that there is a hand down the front of his boxers.

The sun, blinding as ever, is streaming through the balcony windows and Danny has to blink a few times to get his eyes to adjust to the light. When he looks down, yep, there is still a hand stroking his hip and getting dangerously close to his morning erection.

"I accidentally slept with Ben," Steve says in his ear, voice rough and sleep warm. It's one of the most erotic things Danny has heard in his entire life—which is saying something considering all the porn he's watched and the fact that the sentence has another man's name in it.

His own voice is croaky, not at all sexy and he can literally smell his own rank breath. "I'm just as confused as Kono," he says, swallowing around the lump in his throat and fighting the urge to stare at Steve's lazily moving hand. If he looks at it, he'll want to move into it and he's not exactly sure if that's the best tactical move at this point. "How does one accidentally bone someone?"

Steve huffs and it prickles the back of Danny's neck. "I was trying to bone," he says with a certain amount of amusement at Danny's vocabulary," _you_ but I got too drunk."

Danny remembers that night vividly. It wasn't too long ago and they had all decided to go for a few drinks, unwind after a case. It had been a pretty wild night, Spring Break driving the locals from their usual haunts and into the cop-beat. Chin had been tense all night, family all round him and Kono had forgotten about Ben as soon as she realized what was happening. Two beers in, Kono left with Chin and Danny had stuck around for a little while, chatting up HPD friends until he needed to make a decision, stay and get trashed or go home and sleep. Steve had disappeared, holing up in a corner with some locals and when Danny had found him to say goodnight he was telling SEAL stories to a group of people who clearly thought Steve was some sort of God. At the time, Danny hadn't recognized Ben but he must have been there.

"Wait," Danny says, hand automatically going to still Steve's. "You tried to sleep with me that night?"

"Yes."

Danny frowns. Steve acted the same as he always did that night.

"You suck then because I had no idea you were trying to seduce me," Danny settles on.

He can't see Steve pout, since the bastard is wrapped around him from behind and rubbing all over him like a fucking cat, but he can feel it against the back of his neck.

"It was a strategic retreat," he says haughtily.

"Ha! That's the biggest loud of crap—"

"I really like morning sex."

Danny blinks. "So what? We're done talking about this because you say so?"

"Danno," Steve huffs, pouty and petulant like Danny's the lunatic here. "Sleeping with Ben just happened, it isn't a thing, alright? It's casual."

"And what? This, between us, the cuddling and hand holding and your hand down my pants—that's a thing? Or is that just casual too?"

There is an awkward pause, where the line of Steve's body goes rigid and Danny's heart feels like it's in his belly now, vulnerable and fleshy, not protected by the cage of his ribs. This is the crux of it, isn't it? Danny's not into being a casual fling or hell, Steve McGarrett's _accident_. He's been making lists and none of them involve that sort of low risk gamble. They're all in bets, Gracie's hopeful heart and Danny's scared and scarred one, right on the line.

"I want it to be," Steve says. For the first time, he sounds softer around the edges. His voice is just as rough but raw too, honest and full to bursting. "I want it to be a thing—if you do." The end is whispered, a little cop-out that Danny knows is supposed to be Steve's way out. It's a shit way out, but Steve's always got one, even if it's blow it all up and just sort through the rubble.

Steve nuzzles the back of his neck, nervous and fidgety like he gets when they haven't had much action with serious artillery in a while. His hand is white-knuckled and sure to be bruising Danny's hip but it's grounding.

"I guess I could get used to morning sex," Danny replies, just as softly. "You know, as long as there is a distant prospect of coffee."

Steve's grip doesn't loosen but he does mutter a hasty and blatantly relieved, "thank god" that has Danny reeling a little bit—like Steve wasn't aware that Danny was a sure thing; like Danny hasn't been making lists and having revelations and hiding under his desk far too often; like he hasn't been wearing his heart on his sleeve and everybody has been waiting for someone to tear it to shreds; like Steve just didn't know Danny loved him, even when he was wearing a tactical vest and smelled like kevlar.

"Steve—"

But he's already being maneuvered onto his back bringing Steve's face front and center.

"Morning," he says and if this were anyone else, Danny would swear that there's a blush on Steve's cheeks. Instead, Danny just swallows, takes in the ridiculously attractive planes of his face, his sleep tousled hair and that grin. It's not his normal, I-just-got-to-jump-out-of-a-helicopter-and-discharge-my-weapon sort of grin. It's more private, just as enthusiastic, but smaller and gentler, like he's been given something extremely special.

"You're a doofus," Danny says because it's the only thing that doesn't plainly give himself up. Steve grins a little wider anyway and says, "You have terrible morning breath," before kissing him. It's not a tentative or gentle kiss, it feels familiar and a little desperate, like Steve can't decide what he wants to devote his attention to first. He kisses with a short attention span until Danny is frustrated and opens his mouth to tell him the what-for when Steve ninjas his tongue between Danny's lips and then, well, then it's not so ADHD and more like suction. Steve licks into his mouth with determination, moaning when he discovers Danny's back teeth with his tongue. Embarrassingly enough, the sound makes Danny arch up into the kiss because _Christ_ Steve sounds like every wet-dream Danny's been having since he came to this island and now he's making those sounds again and again as he takes Danny's mouth over with his tongue like he's claiming it for all of America.

Unfortunately, all that arching in pleasure pulls on the muscles at his chest.

"Oh fucking-fuck!" Danny swears, wrenching his mouth away to gasp as his chest lights up with pain. "Wait," he practically screams, pulling Steve back in when he moves away suddenly. "It's fine, keep going."

Steve blinks at him.

Danny tries to smile. "It's fine, McGarrett. Get back down here."

Steve just shakes his head. "I've been waiting for this—this—this shtuping to happen for a long time and I'm not going to have you _die_ in the middle of it."

"I'm hardly dying! I've still got an erection."

Steve narrows his eyes. "Look who's lecturing who on safety and protocol."

"You're actually going to be smug right now? My injuries are stopping us from having, what I'm sure would be pretty fantastic sex and _you're being smug right now_?"

Danny shakes Steve by the shoulders, just a little bit. Steve blinks.

"You're right," he says, jaw firmly set. "We need to change positions."

They both get to work, ridding Danny of his boxers and Steve of his briefs with only minimal distractions. (Meaning that Steve spends three whole minutes staring at Danny's cock and when Danny asks "What the fuck is the hold up, McGarrett?" his only answer is: "I really like to suck cock" and then Danny spends the next twenty seconds swearing, cursing the heavens for his injuries before Steve shuts him up by sucking on his tongue.)

Finally, the move back into the position they were in this morning, except now, Danny's thighs are slick with lube Steve dug up from under a pillow and Steve's long, leaking cock is sandwiched between them. Steve's Gorilla-like arms are holding Danny across the collar bone and stomach, keeping his body prone except for tiny jerks of his hips.

"God, Danny," Steve moans, and Danny just nods, pushing back when Steve slides forward and moans into his ear. "Touch yourself, fuck _fuck_ \--I'm not gonna last," Steve moans, driving his hips forward to pound into the space between Danny's cheeks, his cock slick against Danny's balls.

Danny wastes no time wrapping a tight fist around his dick and stroking in rhythm with Steve's forceful thrusts. The position takes all the pressure off Danny's chest and knee, leaving Steve entirely in control, which of course, makes him hotter. It fucking figures.

There's a little hint of surprise, when Steve mumbles and babbles throughout the entire thing, moaning into Danny's ear and saying some seriously filthy things that make Danny so hot and wet, his cock goes sliding through his fist as if he'd lubed his hand. Although he's got a habit of rambling, Danny's fairly silent during sex. His mind just switches off and God, now, here, it gets lost in the hitching breath of Steve's voice, the way he fumbles through phrases and spends most of the time just moaning through vowels with every twist and desperate thrust between Danny's thighs.

"Wanna suck you off, fuck your face and hold you down with your tie—fuck, Danny, want your cock in me so badly," Steve whimpers then and Danny can't help it, he comes over his fist with choked moans. Distantly, he can hear Steve babbling on about fucking his ass but it's all overshadowed by Steve's wrenched out sobbing growl as he comes and coats Danny's thighs and ass cheeks with come. He's filthy with his own come, all over his stomach and hand, while Steve's dick is still pulsing with wild little jerks between his thighs and it's actually pretty disgusting how much lube and come is on Danny's skin right now.

It's fucking awesome.

Steve doesn't move. He's still octopused around Danny and _nuzzling_ the back of Danny's neck. It's a bit surreal but not weird and Danny can't do anything but ride out his post-orgasm haze in Steve's tight hold.

"I need a shower, coffee and like, three Vicodin, and not necessarily in that order," Danny grumbles after five minutes of having his neck sucked on by Steve.

"Hmm, mouth wash too," Steve murmurs and Danny can do nothing but smack him until they both start laughing.

It's good. It's all really stupidly good.

<3<3<3

Steve disappears after making out with various parts of Danny's neck and shoulders for a good twenty-five minutes. Danny tries to complain but ends up dozing through most of it, until Steve rolls him over and kisses his mouth, soft and loving and _so familiar_ that Danny wakes up immediately. Of course, that's when Steve rolls out of bed.

"Where are you going?"

Steve ignores him and goes to dig around in the chest of drawers. "Morning swim."

Danny groans. "You just spend the better part of the morning _cuddling with me_ ," Danny says, smashing his face into the pillow so he doesn't stare at Steve's deliciously bare backside (even his ass cheeks are tan). "Who are you foolin', tough guy?"

But Steve just laughs and says, "I like my morning sex with a swim" and disappears with a shit-eating grin that Danny's seen so many times before, on the other end, and something smothers him a bit from the inside, knowing he's the one who put that look on Steve's face and not Ben or Catherine or any other of McGarrett's _accidental_ lays.

Danny spends another ten minutes in Steve's bed before the sheer filth of his own skin starts to gross him out. He takes a twenty minutes shower, scrubbing off the results of their earlier activities before he gets to the layer of grime left over from yesterday's fire and other emotionally scarring incidents. He curses a bit violently, leaving him out of breath, when he finds that the soap Steve has is fucking _pineapple and coconut_ scented. It's too late by then with it rolling down him and seeping into his pores like nuclear waste oozing into vital parts of the ocean. Toxic shit.

There's extra razors in the cabinet but Danny forgoes shaving his day and half stubble as to cover up his beard burn. He has beard burn because he's just fucked a man. A man who happens to be his boss.

"No big-gay-freak-outs," Danny says to himself in the mirror with a firm nod and the moment, however fleeting, disappears. He takes a few breaths, easy and deep, before rooting around in the drawers to find a newly packaged toothbrush. He uses the last of the toothpaste in retaliation for the soap.

He spends a good deal of time studying his bruises in the mirror after he's done with his teeth. Both his chest and his knee look considerably worse than yesterday but that's to be expected with those types of hits. Still, the skin is mostly black, turning purple on the edges and honestly, really nasty. He's generally not a self-conscious guy—he's always been short but has never had any trouble keeping himself in shape enough to run down meth-addicts so high they can't even feel pain anymore. But the outrageous amount of bruising covering his chest spreads nipple to nipple and makes him wince.

He washes down two painkillers and wills himself not to think about it.

His trousers from yesterday are disgusting and there is no way Danny's putting them back on his body. Instead, he paws through Steve's truly appalling collection of clothes. (Seriously, his dress blues are the _only thing_ not designed to also be swimwear. Even his cargos _zip off_ into shorts. It's fucking insanity.) He finds sweats with **NAVY** fading down one leg and pulls them on. Even after three rolls, he's still swimming in them.

"Fucking giant," Danny grumbles, pulling on a white t-shirt and navigating his way down the stairs without falling, only wincing slightly and really wishing those painkillers would kick in a little bit faster.

After conducting a thorough examination of the kitchen, Danny comes up dangerously short. He's staring at the sink when Steve comes in, drying himself off with his towel and generally looking way too perky.

"Where's your damn coffee machine?" Danny says, waving around vaguely to the kitchen. "Is there some sort of secret compartment? Is there a code word? Oh wait, do we need to call Catherine to locate it with her fancy super-secret skills of Naval Intelligence? Because let me tell you, I passed my Detective Test with flying colors and I'm pretty sure finding something to produce coffee is like, the first step in anything Hoboken PD does."

When Danny glances at Steve's face, he's blinking again, which means he's trying to look innocent and only managing to look a little simple. This man was in Special Ops? With a face like that? Dear Lord.

"Steve, where—"

"I guess this is the time where I let you know that I don't have a coffee maker?"

It's Danny's turn to blink with incomprehension.

"What?"

Steve steps a little closer, his eyes flickering between Danny's mouth and his eyes. Danny is too stunned to really care that Steve's face is transitioning between don't-kick-the-puppy to I'm-a-sexy-SEAL. He's more concerned with the fact that there isn't a way to get coffee inside of him.

"Do you even have coffee beans? At this point, I'm willing to fucking eat them straight."

Steve reaches for him but Danny turns away, facing the sink and running the water into the cup.

"Don't touch me," he grumbles but Steve just laughs and presses up against his back. Once again, this octopus thing is a serious affliction of Steve's.

"Are you seriously gonna get pissy because I don't have coffee?"

"I will literally eat the coffee bean, unbrewed, that is how much I need coffee right now," Danny says, trying to stay stern but it's practically impossible when Steve smells salty like the ocean and sun warmed skin. Damn him.

"I have something else you can eat," Steve literally _leers_ and presses his very wet, trunk-clad cock to Danny's backside.

Danny jerks his head around. "Are you serious? Are you seriously trying to get a blowjob right now? Because let me tell you something, babe, you can't just go denying a Jersey boy his coffee and then expect to get rewarded! You're like a dog, McGarrett. You need to be trained. This is not proper behavior befitting a man of your station," Danny goes for casual but Steve's grinding his wet dick into Danny's lower back like he's slutty for it and Danny's voice goes a little breathy in the end.

"Nahhhh," Steve says, all charm. He presses his mouth to Danny's neck, tonguing the mark Danny had traced in the mirror before moving to press hot kisses behind Danny's ear. "Blowjobs are always good, with or without coffee."

"McGarrett—"

"Come on, Danno," Steve purrs. "I'll make it easy on your knee. You can just lie back and I'll feed it to you. It'll be good, Danny. So good to have your mouth on me, make you hot and I taste good, promise you, Danny. I taste really good."

How is he supposed to say no?

The Vicodin makes him looser than normal, pliant in Steve's hands when he coaxes Danny around to face him. Any anxiety Danny has about taking a dick into his mouth is chased away by Steve's tongue. He kisses like a man starved. Danny tries to take control once or twice but Steve just whimpers into his mouth and laps at his lips until Danny gives up, making Steve moan and clutch at his hair like a teenage-boy. It shouldn't be hot. It really shouldn't.

But Danny ends up on his back, laid out on the couch in sweatpants too long for him as Steve scrambles to get his dick out of his board-shorts, panting with lust-blown pupils and looking unabashedly eager.

"This is why grown-ups have zippers," Danny says, watching Steve scrape his cock against the velcro at the top of his pants and curse. "Seriously, if you would just dress yourself like an adult..."

Steve gets his dick free, pushing his shorts down awkwardly until he can straddle Danny's shoulders and still have enough room for his balls. It's really hilarious looking but for some reason, Danny can't seem to laugh.

He licks his lips.

"Danny—"

"Yeah," he says, nodding slightly. "Alright."

Steven groans, hand going to grip the base of his cock as he slowly lowers his crotch to Danny's face. It's not as strange feeling as Danny would imagine, lying on his back like this. Instead, on the first stroke in, Steve goes down a little easier than he would if Danny were on his knees, especially since it's been a while.

"Holy fucking hell, Danny," Steve curses, hips stuttering a little when he pulls out, sliding back in and clearly trying to keep his control.

Danny hasn't even started yet and Steve's a mess.

He hums in response and Steve swears, one hand going to slap against the wall as the other wraps into Danny's still-damp hair. Danny sucks a little too hard in retaliation for messing up his hair but Steve doesn't seem to notice, his hips picking up speed a little and grinding into Danny's mouth. There's not much rhythm to it, as Steve looks too blissed out to understand the concept, but Danny lets him do whatever he wants as long as he doesn't go too deep. Steve sticks to shallow thrusts, head tilted back as he moans, near constantly while he uses Danny's mouth.

This way, Danny certainly does taste him and Christ, McGarrett isn't wrong, his precome isn't very bitter. There's a sugary taste to it that has Danny swirling his tongue to get more and causing Steve to babble more.

"Yeah, Danny," he groans out. "So good, feels so good on your tongue. Yeah, _Christ_."

Soon, Danny's jaw will start to hurt if they don't hurry this along. There's enough spit dribbling down his chin that when he brings his finger up, it coats it with saliva. Danny wastes no time in working that finger in between Steve's flexing cheeks and sliding home.

"Fuck! S'good, Danny, fuck me. I love it, god, you have no idea how much I love getting it up my ass," Steve moans, hips getting a little erratic. Danny moans, because _yeah_ , Steve McGarrett is probably a shameless slut and _when did that happen_ and _why have they just now gotten around to this?_

He works one finger but it's not enough, he can't really reach Steve's prostate from this angle with only the one. He's going to add a second one when the front door flies open.

Steve doesn't even pull his dick out, he just reaches down behind the couch to grab his weapon and points it at the open door—dick still wedged into Danny's mouth, finger still up his ass.

"Hey boss!" Kono says brightly, stepping inside.

Danny chokes a little bit. Steve pats his head. "Everything alright?"

Kono looks down to where Danny is having a complete and total meltdown and says, "Really? That's how you guys decided to do it?"

"I didn't want to hurt his knee," Steve says, whiny and when Danny looks up to convey that _Hey! Maybe they could have this conversation without his mouth full of cock, wouldn't that be great?_ Steve is pouting.

"I dunno, Bossman," Kono goes on, tilting her head and squinting with what Danny knows to be pure glee. "I think it would work better—"

Danny almost bites Steve's dick off when Chin walks in, and uses the hand that isn't buried in Steve's ass to yank a throw pillow up as a barrier between his stuffed-full mouth and his co-workers.

"Whoa, _Jesus-fucking-Christ_ ," Chin exclaims. "Would you warn a man, Kono?"

Danny pulls his finger out of Steve's ass and it jerks him into chasing it with a little huff, consequently letting Danny pull away from Steve's crotch and put the pillow between Steve's dick and Danny's face. (Although, it's so _still_ so hard it could probably drill a hole through the pillow, no sweat.)

"What the fuck!" He manages to get out but it's rough, his voice wet and oh no—

Steve's all crazy-eyes, staring wildly from Kono to Danny's mouth in a frantic, panicked sort of way.

"Let's go get coffee, cuz!" Kono says before pulling him out the door with a wink and a rude hand gesture that Danny doesn't even want to decipher.

Danny wishes he could sigh with relief. He really does. Instead, he turns his head to yell at Steve, only to find him shoving _two of his own fingers_ into his ass.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Danny barely gets out because Steve is riding his own hand and looking down at Danny's mouth like pineapples were actually growing out of it.

"Danny, your voice—"

But then Danny takes pity on him because Chin and Kono are getting coffee right now and Danny has to deal with Steve, who is insanely sexy and really desperate and _how is this his life?_

The moment the tip of Steve's dick hits Danny's mouth he's coming, all down Danny's chin, streaking his cheeks with little of it actually making it into his mouth.

Steve collapses on top of him.

Danny is trying to figure out what part of the situation he's currently in is worse: the fact that Chin and Kono caught them; Kono and Steve's _conversation_ while Danny had a dick in his mouth; the fact that Danny still hasn't had coffee or the pressing factor of his very hard cock leaking against his sweatpants in conjunction with the new information that Steve likes things up his ass.

"We're never leaving the house," Steve is saying, licking at Danny's chin and cheeks. "We're going to have sex forever."

"I'm sure you have forgotten about work," Danny growls out. "You know, with the fact that the last five minutes of my life were the most unprofessional display of—"

Steve moans and sticks his tongue in Danny's mouth.

They make out sloppily and Steve's just getting around to sticking his hand down Danny's pants, selfish asshole, when Danny's phone beeps.

Text from **Kono** :  
 _sorry to interrupt the gay-love but we got a lead on our arsonist._

Danny scowls. "They have a lead."

"Dammit," Steve pouts before shrugging, jabbing his knee into Danny's shoulder and launching himself over the back of his couch to look for his spare set of cargo pants.

"Are we really leaving me hanging right now?" Danny says after Steve has gotten dressed in record time, in clothes that seem to have appeared out of nowhere. Steve's trotting down the stairs with his phone and both their guns as Danny stares down at his neglected hard-on. "After your stunning display of teenage-boy desperation and I'm the one who has to go chase down an arsonist with an erection? This is the thanks I get?"

Steve doesn't look apologetic. He looks smug in his stupid cargo pants and really attractive black polo. It doesn't even attempt to cover up the hickey on his neck. Danny wants to hit him.

He holds up his phone with a look, a stupid look that Danny kind of wants to smother with a pillow. "Kono bought you coffee?"

"You will pay," Danny says turning to limp out the door without looking to see if Steve, the annoying bastard, is following. "And we're stopping by my apartment for clothes because I am not chasing down a suspect in your clothes. I will do it in a tie. You will not complain and after all this is done, you will buy a coffee maker and _practice_ making me coffee. No arguments," Danny finishes. Steve is staring at him over the hood of the car, grinning like a loon—like Danny just gave him the best thing in the world—and Danny doesn't know what to do with that so he just yells. "Get into the damn car, you hooligan!"

"Sure thing, Danno."

Danny doesn't smile. He fucking doesn't.

If later, he makes new lists—lists, that if he were a 12-year old girl would have hearts on them or Danny McGarrett at the top—that's really his business, okay?

<3<3<3


End file.
